What makes for an effective content marketing strategy? It’s no longer a question of “if” you need a content marketing strategy to effectively promote your business online—it’s now become a question of “how”, or even more specifically, “Which content marketing strategy is right for my business?”.
In this article, we’ll show you the three key elements to create a winning content marketing strategy and how to use each one to build a content creation plan that will put your business in a great position to succeed.
1. Understand Your Business Goals
Content marketing is a long-term strategy, so it’s important to know why you’re doing it, and what your long-term goals are. Are you trying to drive more traffic to your website? Are you trying to increase conversions on your landing pages? Do you want to build your brand awareness?
Knowing your overall business goals is an essential step in content marketing strategy because it helps you identify the main KPIs you should be tracking.
For example, an SEO expert we worked with aims to increase his clients’ organic traffic from Google by 40%. He’s using a content marketing strategy to drive more traffic to his client’s blog content, so tracking his overall traffic from Google is a key KPI for him.
Make sure you know your long-term business goals because this will help you decide how you want to approach your content marketing strategy.
2. Define Your Reader Persona
The second key element of a content marketing strategy is defining your reader persona (or personas). A persona is a fictional representation of your key audience, and it helps you create content that is relevant to them.
When writing your content, you should write from the perspective of your personas. By doing this, you’ll be creating content that addresses the problems and challenges faced by your readers, and you’ll also be able to use language that resonates with them.
For example, if you’re a web designer trying to write content for non-technical business owners, then you should imagine that you’re writing for somebody like Joe.
Joe is a 45-year-old business owner who has been doing small business accounting for the last 20 years. He comes from a non-technical background, but he has a great deal of business knowledge. When writing content for Joe, you should write from the perspective of Joe, and use language that is appropriate for him.
So, for example, you should use words like “accounting” or “small business” instead of “bookkeeping” and “business owner”, because using the latter words will likely alienate Joe.
Creating personas is a great way to keep your content relevant, and in turn, it will also help you to build trust with your readers.
3. Create A Content Calendar
The third key element of a content marketing strategy is creating a content calendar that outlines exactly what you’ll be writing about, and when you’ll be publishing it.
Creating an editorial calendar will help to keep you on track and ensure that you’re delivering consistent content to your readers. It will also ensure that you’re able to create quality content consistently and it will save you hours of wasted time.
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That’s the end of our quick look at the ways that you can build an effective content marketing strategy. Now that you have this valuable information, it’s time to go out there and try it for yourself.
NESMA Group is a reliable content agency in Derry, NH. We help business owners get more customers through online marketing. Contact us.